{"id":9,"date":"2012-02-20T01:09:56","date_gmt":"2012-02-20T01:09:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/staging.startups.co.uk\/?p=9"},"modified":"2021-05-18T17:16:11","modified_gmt":"2021-05-18T16:16:11","slug":"ben-hardyment","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.startups.co.uk\/young-guns\/ben-hardyment\/","title":{"rendered":"Ben Hardyment: webflix.co.uk"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Ben Hardyment<\/strong><br>\n<strong>Age:<\/strong> 32<br>\n<strong>Company:<\/strong> webflix.co.uk<\/p>\n<p>Frustrated at the lack of choice at his local Blockbusters, former film director Ben Hardyment decided to use his knowledge of the sector to start a specialist rental service which offers genuine choice in DVD rental. Now, barely a year old, his online borrowing service webflix.co.uk is growing a cult customer base and is on target to hit &pound;1m turnover, all with a staff of four. After raising &pound;150,000 to start the business he is now looking for funding to build on its success.<\/p>\n<p><strong>2016 update:<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>After selling Webflix to LoveFilm in 2005, Hardyment took up the role of managing director at DomainBroker.co.uk, a domain brokerage service, before moving on to become managing director at website design company Explosive Media in 2007. In 2009 he founded Zapper, a re-commerce site for the sale of used books, CDs, DVDs and games, which secured &pound;250,000 from Theo Paphitis in series 10 of Dragons&rsquo; Den &ndash; it remains the largest investment offered by a single Dragon. The investment failed to got through after the show, with Hardyment staying on as CEO until June 2015 when he left to found Parallax VR- a platform for creating, hosting and delivering virtual reality experiences.<\/p>\n\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ben Hardyment Age: 32 Company: webflix.co.uk Frustrated at the lack of choice at his local Blockbusters, former film director Ben Hardyment decided to use his knowledge of the sector to start a specialist rental service which offers genuine choice in DVD rental. Now, barely a year old, his online borrowing service webflix.co.uk is growing a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91469,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[138],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-9","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-class-of-2003"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n<title>Ben Hardyment: webflix.co.uk - Young Guns by Startups.co.uk: Start up a successful business<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/staging.startups.co.uk\/young-guns\/ben-hardyment\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_GB\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ben Hardyment: webflix.co.uk - Young Guns by Startups.co.uk: Start up a successful business\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Ben Hardyment Age: 32 Company: webflix.co.uk Frustrated at the lack of choice at his local Blockbusters, former film director Ben Hardyment decided to use his knowledge of the sector to start a specialist rental service which offers genuine choice in DVD rental. 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